With one near disastrous year of running American military and foreign policy
under their belts, the top civilian officials of the Kennedy administration began
to behave as if they were the lead actor in an episode of Father Knows Best.
They wanted to pack up all their children--the military and the allies--in a big
national security station wagon and drive off on an itinerary mapped with magic
marker. Senior military commanders and leaders of key NATO countries had
their own agendas, however. They did not intend to let wayward drivers like Kennedy, McNamara, and Rusk take the wheel.

Already, of course, McNamara was having trouble making his word law
with the JCS. Because of the Berlin and Laotian crises, his order to the Chiefs
to revise the SIOP in spring 1961 had been shunted aside through the summer
with the result, as we have seen, that every analyst with a globe, a slide rule,
and a contact in the Pentagon had drawn up his own nuclear attack plan against
the Soviet Union. Then in late September when the Joint Staff had at last come
up with a draft, the services had all attacked the document as too theoretical and
impractical in any event because it called for massive increases in forces and
logistical support for all branches of the military. They much preferred a
revision of Eisenhower's Basic National Security Policy, which Nitze and his
staff with JCS assistance had been working on unofficially since the Kennedy
administration took office. At the meeting on July 27, the JCS attempted to
interest the President in the paper without success. Thus by November and
December, they had to accept a revised plan, designated SIOP 63, that contained
all the bells and whistles, options and sub-options the Secretary of Defense had
demanded. Although Kennedy was briefed on January 17, 1962, a final target
list and coordination with Norstad to make Phase IV of the Berlin contingency

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: Ace in the Hole:Why the United States Did Not Use Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War, 1945 to 1965.
Contributors: Timothy J. Botti - Author.
Publisher: Greenwood Press.
Place of publication: Westport, CT.
Publication year: 1996.
Page number: 171.

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